The heroes and villains of 2013

What makes a modern-day hero? And what constitutes villainy? Increasingly, we
have to figure out the good and bad of life for ourselves. As a handy guide,
we offer our annual list of the year's heroes and villains...

It’s the same every year. The heroes get the honours, and the villains get the attention. “How far that little candle throws its beam; so shines a good deed in a weary world,” says Portia in the Merchant of Venice, but the baddies get the best lines, too. “Between two evils, I always pick the one I haven’t tried before,” said Mae West – and it is hard to argue that while goodness is rewarding, naughtiness is more fun.

Partly because we are in a virtue squeeze. A once-clear code of conduct has become muddled by catch-all concepts such as “inappropriate”, which now applies to anything anyone disapproves of, but doesn’t necessarily amount to villainy in the traditional sense. In December, a planned wind farm in Hampshire was branded “totally inappropriate” by the local MP, but so, according to the Chief Secretary of the Treasury, was the proposed MPs’ pay rise, while Lady Gaga’s raunchy performance on X-Factor was deemed by the television regulator to be “not inappropriate” although, presumably, not “appropriate” either.

It’s no clearer on the other side of the coin. People who merely have the misfortune to be affected by bad weather are praised as “heroes”, and extravagant honours heaped upon those who, as far as the rest of us can see, do nothing beyond their job description.

Here are our picks...

THE HEROES

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In making him it’s 'Person of the Year’, Time magazine described Pope Francis as “a superstar”, but the challenge for the new pontiff is to be more than box office. There is no doubting his popular appeal; the Vatican says it is issuing four times more tickets for Francis’s weekly audiences than for those of any previous pope, and the 77-year-old Argentinian former nightclub bouncer has more than 10 million Twitter followers. The first South American pope, Francis plays it humble – giving up his grand apartments in the Apostolic Palace and according special respect to the poor and marginalised. Yet behind the crowds and salutations, the Church remains in trouble, the Vatican resistant to real change, and it is what Francis leaves behind rather than what he puts on display that will ultimately matter.

Pope Francis (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

NELSON MANDELA

Amid all the talk of legacies and achievements, it was easy to forget that Nelson Mandela was possessed of a remarkable sense of ordinariness that largely guided his “long walk”. He sought very little for himself, had only a passing interest in politics, history or statecraft, and essentially saw life in terms of a benign natural order which, thanks to meddlings of men, occasionally needed smoothing out. As South Africa’s first black president he was unassertive almost to the point of neglect, a factor that – given the dismal quality of those he passed power on to – at least shows he wasn’t perfect. Yet it should be no more than a minor quibble against the record a man who not only taught the world how to forgive, but made it love him.

Nelson Mandela

ANDY MURRAY

For many years the reassuring middle-class cheeriness of Wimbledon tended to obscure the fact that chaps were still playing in long trousers when a Briton last won the men’s singles title. Then along came Andy Murray, slab-chopped, Scottish and scowling beneath a tangle of greasy curls, and the crowds weren’t reassured at all. Around the newcomer was an air of alienation, even charmlessness, that made him hard to love, but which also hinted at the reasons why Murray wasn’t like the affable no-hopers that had gone before. In July, aged 26, Andy demolished Novak Djokvic in straight sets to bring the title home for the first time in 77 years. The crowd decided that it loved him after all, and we can only hope there will be no ill effects on his game.

ANGELINA JOLIE

Unshakable in its suspicion of wealth, fame and beauty, much of the world’s media has covered Angelina Jolie with a heavily-critical eye. It scoffs at her visits to refugee camps, her embrace of eco-communities, her refusal to get married “until everyone else who loves each other has a right to marry too,” and generally takes the view that she should belt up and get on with being a movie star. Yet earlier this year, when the oft-voted “world’s sexiest woman” announced that she had undergone a preventative double-mastectomy, the response went beyond sympathy into the more serious world where Angelina likes to dwell. Her argument for surgery was that tests had shown she had an 87 per cent chance of developing breast cancer, but it was the bravery of her admission – contrary to all Hollywood logic – that won her admirers. “By her action she is saving lives,” said Dr Jay Orringer, the surgeon who performed the operation. “It will have a permanent impact.”

Angelina Jolie (AP)

ANGELA MERKEL

When Angela Merkel wakes up in the morning, her first job is not to save the floundering European economy, but to rescue her husband’s breakfast. Joachim likes his ham and eggs just so, and Angela in her quiet, unassuming, most-powerful-woman-in-the-world way, is always on hand for the salvage operation. Only when things are under control will she slip into one of her collection of 70 near-identical jackets, all in unthreatening colours, give her light auburn bob a brush, and head off to Berlin where she is serving a third term as Germany’s leader. In September’s general election, Mrs Merkel 59, effortlessly crushed her opponents, yet her success appears to defy all the rules of modern politics. She is hopeless on television, has a near-zero glamour quotient, and doesn’t claim to have any especially clever or original solutions. In an age of artifice, her example is a lesson to others.

Angela Merkel (JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP)

PROFESSOR PETER HIGGS

Physicists sound so confident in explaining the mysteries of the Universe that you’d swear they were making the best bits up. And sometimes they are. Or, at least, telling you things they don’t yet know about. Such was the case when Peter Higgs, a young lecturer at Edinburgh University in the early 1960s, sketched out a theory of a so-called “God Particle” as the key building block of the Universe. The problem was that while Higg’s calculations made perfect scientific sense, no one could find the particle. It took half a century for the now-renamed Higgs-Boson particle to be tracked down, and in October Prof. Higgs, now 84, received the Nobel Prize for his work. Notoriously modest, he played the award down saying: “It only took me two or three weeks. It’s not like I’m Einstein.”

ANDY PEAT

Warrant Officer Andy Peat, a Scottish explosives expert with the Royal Logistical Corps, was working with a special forces unit of the Danish army in Afghanistan in January when a bomb went off, seriously wounding one of the soldiers. WO Peat, 39, disarmed a second bomb, but after a medical team arrived, noticed another, right in the path of stretcher-bearers. Realising that it could detonate at any moment, killing or maiming everyone in the group, he lay across it as a human shield until the evacuation party had left. In August, WO Peat was awarded Denmark’s Anders Lassen prize – given in memory of the country’s greatest WW2 hero. Aware that the Danish soldier had died, Andy donated his prize – over £3,000 – to his widow and children.

Warrant Officer class1 Andy Peat (PA)

INGRID LOYAU-KENNET

Travelling on a London bus through Woolwich in May, Ms Loyau-Kennet, 48, saw what she thought was a traffic accident. A badly injured man was lying in the road, and “purely on instinct” she jumped off and ran to help. A few moments later she was being confronted by two men carrying a bloodied axe and knives. For the next ten minutes she maintained an extraordinary conversation with the presumed killers of Drummer Lee Rigby – one that touched on everything from foreign policy to the cost of living in London – until the police arrived. She was hailed as the “Angel of Woolwich”, and lavishly praised by David Cameron as an example of good citizenship, but back home in Helston, Cornwall, she had to call the police after local yobs abused her in the street.

MALALA YOUSAFARI

Around the 16-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl, Malala Yousafari, has grown a kind of personality cult, admirable in its intent, but increasingly troubling in its scale and detachment from the circumstances that made her famous. In the last year, Malala has met the Queen in Buckingham Palace, the Obamas in the White House, addressed the United Nations and seen her portrait go on display at the National Gallery. Her book has become a global best-seller, and everywhere she goes, crowds clamour to meet her. In 2012, near her home in the Swat Valley, she was shot by the Taliban for promoting the right of girls to be educated. While the West celebrates her cause, parts of the Islamic word mutter that the whole episode is a stunt, supposedly staged by the CIA to justify drone attacks. It may now be in everyone’s interest to let Malala get back to school.

DAVID BOWIE

David Bowe: "the greatest come-back album in history"

Even in his heyday, no one really knew where David Bowie was, and as the years went by and the appearances became less frequent, the news scarcer, the reported sightings more poignant, the belief took hold that his life’s work was done. A serious heart attack in 2004 had ended Bowie’s performing days, sending him into semi-seculsion with his wife and young daughter in New York, and his agent was supposedly under instructions to bin all new offers. Then, suddenly, on January 8 – the singer’s 65th birthday – an entire new album, The Next Day, was announced. The response was rapturous, with one critic hailing it as “the greatest come-back album in history.” Not that the great enigma really does comebacks. He merely returns in different ways.

AND THE VILLAINS....

THE HUHNES

"Revenge, at first though sweet/ Bitter ere long back on itself recoils."

Paradise Lost.

And so it turned out for Chris Huhne, the fashionably-opinionated Lib-Dem minister for climate change and his heat-emitting Greek-born wife, Vicky Pryce, both of whom ended up in the cooler. Theirs was a tale of ambition, hubris, infidelity, deceit, vapidity and vengeance. And the cause of it all was… a speeding ticket. Mr Huhne’s first mistake was getting Vicky, an ambitious economist with eyes on a top job at the Treasury, to take the rap after he was clocked by a speed camera in 2003. His second was to inform her, during the half time break in a England World Cup football match, that he was dumping her for his dark-haired, bisexual press officer, Carla Trimingham. Furious, Mrs Huhne spilled the beans, and both were convicted in March of perverting the course of justice. In court, Mr Huhne was described as “a driven man”, but not, unfortunately, on the occasion in question.

Chris Huhne (Getty Images/AFP)

MILEY CYRUS

With great fame comes great responsibility, which only the most villainous manage to avoid entirely. The transformation of Miley Cyrus from cutesy Hollywood child star and teen idol may have been slow in coming, but Miley knew she was getting somewhere when the 2013 polls propelled her to No1 in the list of World’s Worst Role Models, ahead even of Lindsay Lohan. The 21-year-old took the familiar route of clothing-and-taste avoidance to finish the year in tawdry style by 'twerking’ poptastically with Father Christmas at a Jingle Bell Stage Ball in New York. On the way she managed to dump her wholesome Aussie fiancé Liam Hemsworth, declaring: “It was fun to wear a fat rock, but now I can actually be happy.” Sweet.

Miley Cyrus (Getty Images)

EDWARD SNOWDEN

Whistleblower or traitor? Self-sacrificing patriot or narcissistic nincompoop? The world was understandably divided by the case of the US defence industry computer whiz who leaked vast troves of secret documents about the extent of American spying. The most shocking questions, however, surrounded Snowden himself – such as how a mixed-up 29-year-old university drop-out, with virtually no experience of the espionage trade, could be handed a six-figure salary and allowed almost unlimited access to sensitive material. Currently marooned in Russia, while negotiating for a bolthole in Brazil, Snowdon is said to be missing home. “There’s no precedent for this in my life,” he says. “I hate being in the spotlight.” Which goes to show you can’t believe a word these spooks say.

THE BADGER

No animal pulls Britain’s heartstrings like the Badger; that quizzical, pointy face, the strong, yeoman-like shoulders, the simple-but-effective colour scheme. Through the stories of Kenneth Grahame and Beatrix Potter, we have been conditioned to see Mr Brock rather as we like to see ourselves – decent, loyal, steadfast. Naturally, the beasts have played their popularity for all it is worth, and thanks to three separate Acts of Parliament they are now arguably the most protected and pampered wild animals on earth. The predictable result has been a population explosion, the spread of Bovine TB, the ruination of farms and – increasingly – gardens. Last year’s nicety-nice cull solved nothing. It is time to get serious.

LANCE ARMSTRONG

Still slipstreaming the whiff of burning martyr, Lance Armstrong, the pharmacologically powered American racing cyclist finally came, so to speak, clean. In a gesture of contempt towards the authorities that have pursued him for so long, however, he chose to make his admission on the Oprah Winfrey TV show. Now under legal siege from sponsors who want their money back, Armstrong’s case – not an unreasonable one – remains that the real fault was with the administration of a sport so riddled with abuse that taking drugs was the only way anyone could hope to win.

THE SELFIE

Anointed as the Oxford Dictionary’s online Word of the Year after a reported 17,000 per cent rise in its usage, the “selfie” became a living snapshot of modern society. One click of a mobile phone, and everybody could be a somebody, but what exactly was it about? An epidemic of vanity and narcissism? A collective shedding of inhibitions? The revenge of the faceless? “The selfie is revolutionising how we gather autobiographical information about ourselves and our friends,” says Dr Mariann Hardey, a lecturer in marketing at Durham University. “It’s about continuously rewriting yourself. It’s about presenting yourself in the best way… like when women put on make-up or men bodybuild to look a certain way.” The problem is, as President Obama found out at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, the way you mostly look is daft.

Selfie: the way you mostly look is daft! (Alamy)

THE UNITE UNION

As the paleo-leftie vanguard of Britain’s trade union movement, Unite can be relied upon to get almost everything wrong. Accused by the management of Grangemouth, Scotland’s biggest industrial site, of “fiddling while Rome burns” – a classical allusion almost certainly lost on the fulminating brothers – Unite responded by calling a strike, only to back down when told the plant would close down if it went ahead. The union’s hardline boss, Len McCluskey, was, perhaps, distracted by other matters including allegations that his officials had tried to fix the selection procedure for a parliamentary seat and organised intimidatory picketing of company executives’ homes. Now Unite is threatening to cut its funding of the Labour Party unless there is a return to “real” socialism. Keep running Len, the lemmings are catching up.

HORSEMEAT

Assurances from knowing foodies that horsemeat was actually the healthiest bit of that beef lasagne you bought from the supermarket was really no consolation. The scandal that broke in February exposed the vulnerabilities of a supply chain geared up to the efficient procurement of cheap ingredients. Yet horsemeat is only cheap because of the public’s illogical resistance to eating it. “Tuck in,” cried the clued-up, including the Princess Royal, who knows what is good for horses. If not, necessarily, the image of the nation’s food retailers.

PAUL FLOWERS

A two-century embrace of the Co-operative values of sharing and caring, came to a shuddering halt with the exposure of the Rev. Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-op Bank as a crystal meth-using rent-boy aficionado, whose mind, even while being grilled by Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee, was heavily focused on what he described as: “a two-day, drug-fuelled, gay orgy.” Beyond the question of how the portly, 63-year-old Methodist Minister managed to run a bank at all was the bigger one of how the Co-op came to choose him. Asked by the committee about his qualifications for the job, Rev. Flowers said that he had once sat “part” of a banking exam. The Co-op seems not to have asked him anything at all.

Paul Flowers (Handout)

GODFREY BLOOM

While lesser politicians learn to mind their backs and watch their words, 64-year-old Godfrey Bloom, the all-bluff, all-wisecracking, all-relieved-of-his-responsibilities former UKIP star tells it as he sees it. The son of a Lewisham gas fitter, Bloom was reprimanded by party leader Nigel Farage in July for complaining that Britain was wasting aid money by sending it to “Bongo-Bongo land”, and followed up at UKIP’s September conference by telling a fringe meeting that the party’s female activists were “sluts” who didn’t clean behind the fridge often enough. He resigned the whip shortly afterwards but is not without admirers. The Plain English Campaign gave him its annual Foot in Mouth Award, describing Godfrey as “an overwhelming choice, who could have won on several other occasions.”